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Appreciation post: Our small team in East Austin saved a big client by switching to a simple project board
We were losing track of tasks for a local e-commerce client, and after three missed deadlines, I set up a basic Kanban board in Trello. It took one afternoon to move everything over, and now everyone knows exactly what's next and who owns it. Has anyone else found a simple tool that fixed a major workflow problem here in town?
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kimmurphy1mo ago
Read a piece not long ago that actually looked into this - turns out physical boards beat digital ones for small teams because they force everyone to look at it together, not just check a screen on their own. @oscarsullivan you nailed it about the markers thing, that tactile stuff just clicks different with people. We tried something similar at my buddy's shop and the guys actually paid attention to the board, way more than they ever did to the app notifications. It's wild how something that simple can save you from all the back and forth.
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miller.rowan2mo ago
Had the same mess with my first two crew guys. Jobs were falling through the cracks. Switched to a whiteboard with sticky notes in the shop. Three columns: To Do, Doing, Done. Took an hour to set up. Now we just look at the board each morning. Stupid simple, but it saved us.
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How do people run crews without a board? We tried a fancy app first and it was a total waste. The physical board with markers just works. Guys can grab a sticky note when they start a job and slap it in the done column after. It cut our "where are we at" meetings in half.
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aaron3052mo ago
Honestly, I feel like a clown for how long I fought against this stuff. My old system was a mess of random notes and half-forgotten emails. I finally caved and put a whiteboard up in the office. Ngl, the first week I felt like a kindergarten teacher with all the sticky notes, but man, it actually works. Now I don't have to play detective every morning just to figure out what we're supposed to be doing.
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